


Dawnlight Laughs On You Leaving

by zuotian



Category: South Park
Genre: Blood and Injury, Death, Happy Ending, Haunted Houses, M/M, Murder, Suicide, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:22:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21749716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zuotian/pseuds/zuotian
Summary: The only thing more awful than waking up to bad news is walking into bad news, because the punchline’s always worse.
Relationships: Eric Cartman/Kenny McCormick
Comments: 9
Kudos: 35





	Dawnlight Laughs On You Leaving

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Divine_Fool](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Divine_Fool/gifts).



> i love this one but idk how everybody else is gonna feel about it lmao. i wrote it in manic overdrive procrastinating studying for my finals. 
> 
> title is a play on lyrics from ["white room" by cream](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VR90gQ-SIaY). it was actually different but i changed it. my secret is i'm always tweaking little shit after i post and hope nobody notices, so don't mention it to me if you did. i was going to use [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2KASVJXU64) but i'm saving it for another fic
> 
> it's been awhile since i played SOT/TFWB so ignore any inconsistencies with the houses. and suspend your disbelief regarding....the kindling

ALL CHARACTERS AND EVENTS IN THIS FANFICTION—EVEN THOSE BASED ON A REAL SHOW—ARE ENTIRELY GRATUITOUS. ALL CANONICAL DIALOGUE IS IMPERSONATED ... POORLY. THE FOLLOWING FANFICTION CONTAINS COARSE LANGUAGE AND DUE TO ITS CONTENT IT SHOULD NOT BE READ BY ANYONE.

Things like this were best reserved for the cover of darkness. Preferably followed by a midnight interim where events unseen waited in polite limbo. Reality might break off from whatever you once knew it to be, but at least you’d be asleep when it happened. At least you’d get a split second of normalcy upon waking: a cup of coffee, a steaming piss, a cigarette on the stoop immortalized in amber sunlight before it all shattered into a new alternate dimension. Only then would you turn on the local news or get a phone call and be told the world had ended without your knowledge. A bombshell cushioned by the gauzy dawn when nothing made sense on a good day and which now afforded a last chance at plausible deniability. But that was not the case, in this case. Only Eric Cartman could tip the cosmic scales like that.

There’d be stories, later, about kids walking home from school who had heard the gunshots and screams; grocery store checkout lanes set alight with commotion as word trickled in. Once the house was taped off it became matter of fact. After that, it became a legend.

Everybody in South Park remembered where they were that Tuesday in early October. Kenny had just pulled into his driveway, gravel and glass particles crunching under the weight of his tires. His truck growled like an angry cat at rest when he turned it off; the door opened on rusty hinges with an accompanying hiss. He lowered one steel-toed boot after another, then eyed his slumped childhood home for bad omens and found the screen door agape and askew, signaling someone had either stormed in or stormed out with a ruckus.

The only thing more awful than waking up to bad news is walking into bad news, because the punchline’s always worse. Kenny slammed the truck shut and propped an elbow on its crooked side mirror to light a cigarette. His calloused thumb raked painfully across the lighter wheel. He considered the pros and cons of investing in a matchbook as he took an introductory drag. The smoke masked the stench of sweat and paint primer caked into his coveralls. It curled into the cavities in his teeth, then exited through his nostrils and cycled back again.

He stood there for a few minutes in meditation like a blue collar Buddha. Halfway to the filter, the sound of somebody bumping over the train tracks heralded down the road. He turned, expecting to find his dad swerve drunkenly into the weedy lawn, but Stan’s sedan came to a cautious stop at the disintegrated curb instead. Kenny tucked the cigarette between his lips and strode around his truck, hands held loose at his sides.

Stan unfolded into the open like a marionette on strings. Kyle appeared behind him, red curls gleaming. Two government agents about to announce your firstborn son had died in combat.

Kenny stopped in the middle of the driveway. Kyle placed his forearms flat on the roof of the car to let it carry his weight. Stan scrubbed his hands over his face. All three remained where they were, no one wanting to induce whatever was about to happen next. Even the waist-high weeds around them froze in suspense.

Finally Kenny couldn’t take it anymore. “What is it?”

“Kenny—”

Kyle’s grunt sliced into Stan’s opening statement. “Just tell him.”

Stan whirled. “I’m trying!”

Kenny removed the cigarette from his mouth, for the something to do. “What is it?” he asked again.

Kyle scraped off the car and stomped forward. Kenny took a step back, but Kyle’s hand shot out and impeded his retreat.

“Cartman’s dead.”

The words ricocheted like a shotgun slug to the chest. Stan ducked his head to avoid witnessing the gory aftermath. Kenny fumbled backwards. Kyle tightened the shackle around his wrist. An unmerciful play-by-play issued forth.

“He killed his mom. Then himself. In their house. It’s blocked off, but—” Kyle’s face shuttered, closed up.

“I heard it,” Stan interjected. He was holding his stomach. Holding his guts together, it looked like. “Two shots, then—that was it. I didn’t _know_.”

“Butters found him,” Kyle mentioned. Cartman’s other neighbor, naturally.

Kenny flexed his wrist. Kyle let go of him. He scratched behind his ear. “Okay,” he said.

Kyle blinked. “What?”

His heartbeat leaked out and spread deafening as helicopter blades. “I said okay.”

Stan stumbled forward. “O _kay?_ That’s it?”

Kenny gulped the rest of his cigarette, the ember paper diffusing hot into his skin. “Yeah.”

“He’s dead,” Stan said, at Kyle’s shoulder now. “Cartman’s fucking dead, dude!”

Kyle pushed him back a step. “Just—chill, Stan—”

Stan blundered ahead. With no choice but to let this play out, Kyle stalked off as Stan wrenched Kenny’s coveralls. “Cartman’s dead! I _heard_ it!”

The cigarette fell to ash between them. “Yeah,” Kenny said.

“Are you serious? Are you fucking kidding me?”

“You guys,” Kyle sighed, to no effect.

Stan stared at Kenny hard, looking for validation. He found none. A moan frothed from his twisted mouth. He shook Kenny around so bad Kenny saw stars. Kenny let himself get ragdolled, his molten panic ebbing away to a numbness that went subatomic. Stan’s thumbs dug through his coveralls and flannel all the way into his clavicle, then his throat. “Cartman’s _dead_ , you bastard—”

Kyle began to speculate up and down the length of the driveway while they tussled it out, the tallest weeds reaching up to graze his palms. “I couldn’t even _tell_ . You know? He didn’t seem any more fucked up than _usual_. I mean—how can you see it coming? Something like that?”

Stan elbowed Kenny’s windpipe. “ _Kenny_ should’ve!”

Kenny smacked into the ground. The unbuttoned cuffs of his flannel splayed, giving the gravel and glass clearance to his exposed wrists. Microscopic cuts pierced his skin, more an itch than a scratch. He craned a gaze towards the undercarriage of his truck, which heaved a final, guttural sigh, then shut up.

Kyle eased closer once the dust had settled. “It’s not Kenny’s fault, Stan.”

Stan huffed and puffed. “You knew him best!”

Kenny couldn’t help wheezing a dry chuckle. “Sure,” he said.

“What the hell does that mean?”

Kenny pressed his wrists into the jagged ground. “I don’t know Cartman at all.”

Kyle’s mouth pinched in a sympathetic frown. “That’s not true. You know that isn’t true.”

“Well,” Kenny disputed.

You can’t play racquetball without something to bounce off of. Stan deflated at Kenny’s dead end indifference and Kyle’s ironclad composure. He sat down beside Kenny in the dirt and put his head in his hands. Kyle loitered above them, waffling from foot to foot.

“What now?” Stan asked.

“I imagine there’s going to be an investigation,” Kyle said.

Stan glared through his bangs. “No, I mean. What _now_?”

For some reason they both looked at Kenny. This attention prompted him to rise. He brushed the debris off his coveralls, then examined the fresh blister on his thumb.

“I want to see it,” he said.

Kyle’s expression softened to putty. “Kenny… The funeral’s not going to be _open_ casket—”

“Fucking obviously!”

Kyle and Stan both flinched at the outburst.

Kenny fisted his hands. “I want to see the _house,_ dumbass. I want to see what happened.”

“Dude,” Stan said. “There’s cops everywhere.”

“So? We got into Tom _Brady’s_ mansion.”

Stan averted his gaze. “Thanks to Cartman.”

Kyle crossed his arms, voice soft. “Why do you want to see it?”

“There could be a note. Or—something. Anything. He can’t just leave like that.”

“Let’s do it,” Stan said.

“You can’t be serious,” Kyle objected. “They probably already cleaned the place out!”

Kenny scratched his hands through his overgrown hair, fingernails catching on knotted tangles. “When did it happen?”

“An hour ago,” Stan muttered.

“An _hour_? You’ve known for an _hour_ and you’re just now telling me?!”

“We knew you were at work! We thought it’d be easier on you if we waited till you were home, and—Kenny!”

Kenny shot to his feet. Three extended strides later he was sidling into the truck. “Fuck this!”

Kyle slammed his palm on the rim of the cabin before Kenny could shut the door. “Just _wait_ a second—”

“No! You two have already wasted _enough_ time—”

“We’re going with you,” Stan said, hanging off the open window. He gave Kyle a flat look. “We’re _going_.”

Kyle threw his hands up. “Okay! Fine. Let’s tamper with an active _crime_ scene.”

Kenny glanced at his passenger seat overflowing with buckets of paint, drop cloths, roller trays, and miscellaneous garbage. “You’ll have to get in back.”

The ass end of the truck bounced as Stan scrambled into the bed. “Kyle! Come on.”

“This is—this is crazy,” Kyle huffed.

“Exactly,” Kenny said. “It’s what Cartman would do.”

With that, Kyle braced his foot on the hubcap and climbed in behind Stan, elongated roller attachments and dead leaves clanging around as they both settled down.

Kenny spun out into the street one handed whilst lighting another cigarette with the other, just barely avoiding Stan’s car in the process. Up and over the train tracks they went, about five inches off the ground.

Stan and Kyle hollered at the clamorous landing. Kenny flexed his white-knuckled fist on the wheel. Orange lumps of ash fell into his lap with every hungry lungful of smoke. For a moment, he thought he’d heard Cartman cackling in his ear, egging him to go faster.

He inched his boot closer to the floor. The sticks blurred past in a conglomerated green-brown, replaced by the colorful washes of South Park’s business district. Kyle screamed at him to take a right, so he did, slamming into the residential checkerboard that housed the surrogate ‘hood of his youth, its clean lines and neat yards now dressed in macabre satire.

The truck caterwauled in protest as Kenny careened to an abrupt crawl. He cranked his window down all the way and twisted to yell, “Stan! I got an idea—we’ll camp at your place!”

“Okay, dude!”

Kenny slammed back into his seat and spent the rest of the drive dissociating. The closer they neared Cartman’s place the more it looked like some fucked up version of the old bike parade. Residents clumped together in conspiratorial groups up and down the sidewalks, no doubt wondering what pushed Cartman over the edge. It made Kenny’s skin crawl. He tossed his cigarette butt at a somebody’s heels and pressed onward.

The cops had blockaded Cartman’s street. Kenny pulled up to the barricade. An officer lifted from his lean against his squad car and traipsed over.

“Barbrady,” Kenny greeted, mildly bemused.

Barbrady’s brow wrinkled into a million valleys above his sunglasses. “Kenny!” He glanced at the truck bed to find Stan and Kyle. “Oh, boys—I’m so sorry.”

“I’m here for a job,” Kenny said, curt and to the point. He jabbed his thumb at the cluttered passenger seat. “I paint houses. Stan and Kyle are helping me out. I’m painting Stan’s house, actually.”

“Er, well.” Barbrady tugged his collar. “We’ve kinda got this road blocked off, because, uh, you know...”

“Yeah,” Kenny said. “Listen. I know all about it. But, we’ve really got to get this job done.”

Barbrady walked a couple steps towards the truck bed. “Stan, can’t you ask your mother if you boys could _postpone_ the job?”

Kenny looked at his rearview mirror and bit a grin into his bottom lip; Kyle had straightened up, Jewfro ruffled. “Officer Barbrady, obviously you can _imagine_ the stress we’re under,” he said. “It’d be nice to be able to focus on something else for awhile. Clear our heads.”

“Uh—”

“Obviously, we’re emotionally traumatized. And we will deal with this in our own way. Right now we just need to get our minds off of it. And, honestly—wouldn’t it make things _worse_ if the whole world stopped? Wouldn’t it just _exacerbate_ the situation?”

“Um, well, I suppose—”

“ _Coincidentally_ ,” Kyle said, “Sharon’s had this planned for weeks. We need to paint the bathroom before her new toilet is installed. The toilet’s coming in _two_ days. And you do not want to get in the way of a woman’s interior design.”

“It’s a bidet,” Stan offered to bolster their alibi. “It’s serious business. My dad’s got these hemorrhoids. He can’t wipe anymore. It’ll tear his asshole to shreds. So we have to paint the bathroom so we can get the bidet which is for my dad. It’s a medical thing.”

Kenny leaned out his window for the clincher. “Yeah, she paid us up front, too. It’s really not good to be late on something you got paid up front for.”

Barbrady shuffled a little. “Well, alright. Just—keep to yourselves. And don’t get in anybody’s way.”

Kenny snapped a two-fingered salute. “Yes, sir.”

“I’m sorry again—”

“Thanks for your condolences.”

Barbrady gave them one final, assessing look before he tugged the wooden roadblock aside and waved them through.

Kenny wormed between the crowd of uniforms and squad cars, then pulled into Stan’s driveway. He let the engine idle for a second and basked in their genius. Stan slapped the side of the truck, laughing. Kyle was already on his way to Kenny’s window. “Holy fuck! I can’t believe that worked.”

“I know,” Kenny said. He reached out and patted Kyle’s freckled cheek.

Stan joined them before Kyle figured out a reply. “Man! Fuckin’ A.” He wrapped his hand around the base of Kyle’s neck. “That was inspired, bro.”

Kyle dropped his head. “Yeah, I guess it was.”

They all sobered for a pause. Kenny broke the silence by unlatching his seatbelt. “C’mon. Let’s lug this shit inside, then figure out a game plan.”

They hauled enough stuff to make it look convincing, dumping all of it in the middle of Stan’s living room. Roused by the noise, Sharon and Randy appeared in the kitchen doorway.

Randy hung back, but Sharon immediately swept forward. Kenny staggered under the force of her massive hug. “Uh—hi, Sharon—”

She gave him a big old squeeze, smelling soft and sweet. Her hair was graying at the edges. Kenny’s nose landed beneath her earlobe when he awkwardly returned the embrace, not expecting such affection.

“Oh, Kenny—” She pulled back sniffy and teary-eyed. “When Stan said he and Kyle were off to go tell you, my heart just broke. I know you were closest to Eric.”

Kenny held onto her forearms, fearful he might drop into the fetal position otherwise. “Um, yeah. It’s really… It’s a shock, for sure.”

“If you need _anything_ , let me know.”

“Thanks. Um, thanks a lot.”

She snatched her hands away. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m smothering you. I’m just—whew!” She dabbed her eyes. “The police were asking questions for so _long_. We couldn’t tell them much. It all happened so quick.”

Stan directed a bland smile at Kenny, the kind that’s a stand-in for whatever appropriate social response you’re _supposed_ to provide, but cannot calculate. “Uh, yeah. That’s kind of also why we were, you know...so late.”

Randy stepped into the conversation, a beer in hand. Probably not his first, or second, or even fifth, if Kenny had to guess. “Let the boys breathe, Sharon.” He looked down and kicked an errant drop cloth. “What’s all this crap?”

“Randy,” Sharon hissed.

“We told Barbrady we’re painting the bathroom,” Stan informed, conveniently leaving out Randy’s nonexistent anal complications. “To sneak Kenny in.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Sharon said. “Everyone _knows_ Kenny was—”

“He let us go, though,” Kenny said. He didn’t want to keep hearing everybody talk about how he was Cartman’s best friend till death did them part.

“Well—you want a beer?” Randy offered. “Or something stronger?”

Stan and Kyle waited for Kenny’s cue. He supposed he was running the show, now that the position of ringleader was vacated, and he didn’t know whether he’d be able to fill it.

“Uh, sure,” he said.

They all piled around the kitchen table. Light poured in from the sliding door and turned the pink walls a rotten peach color. Sharon puttered with a mother’s anxious compulsion, poking at the dirty dishes in the sink and retrieving snacks from the fridge which nobody touched. Randy sat at the head of the table, his legs spread in a V; Stan mirrored the position at his father’s left, and Kyle sat beside him. Kenny took up Randy’s other side.

Sharon portioned beer for Randy, Kyle, and Stan, whilst Randy took it upon himself to mix a drink for Kenny. Three fingers of bourbon from a decanter off the top shelf and a dash of cola, no ice. Kenny graciously accepted the liquor. Nobody raised their glasses or even looked at each other, but the implication of a toast was there when they all shared a first sip.

Randy lowered his beer with a sigh, wiped his mustache with the heel of his hand. “So,” he said.

Kenny looked up from the table, obligated to reply. None of them had ever taken Randy seriously but given the context Kenny felt the man’s hierarchy over him; somebody to navigate these choppy waters, no matter how unskillfully. He felt like a little kid again, like him and the guys had just woken up from a sleepover and were now awaiting Sharon’s pancakes. The beers might as well have been coffee and milk.

“What happened?” He dug his elbows into the table and hunched forward, hands clasped around his bourbon. “Stan said there were gunshots.”

Randy’s lips pursed. “Two of them, yeah. Stan came running downstairs. Sharon and I were at the window. Stotch’s boy—he went outside and knocked on the door. It must’ve been unlocked. He looked inside, and then—”

“He screamed,” Stan said.

“We knew something terrible happened,” Sharon supplied. The men turned. She was frozen at the counter, her hands braced on the sink’s edge. “I’ve never heard anything like it.”

“I heard him too,” Kyle added. “By that point everyone was looking outside to see what was going on.”

“Where’s Butters now?” Kenny asked.

Stan glanced at his father. Randy shrugged. “Police station, I think.”

Kenny dug his thumbnail between his front teeth. “And he killed his mom?”

“Yes,” Randy said.

Stan took over retelling the story. “Butters was in Cartman’s front yard, shouting about blood and how they were both dead. I think fifteen people called 911. Nobody went out for Butters. We all just kind of—watched. He was losing his mind.”

A sympathetic pang thudded in Kenny’s chest. But what the hell could you do in a situation like that? Nothing. “Does anybody know why he did it?”

Randy shook his head. “Cops are still figuring it out. But, well. You know how he was.”

Kenny frowned. “What the fuck does that mean?”

Sharon broke out of her fugue state and walked over to a put a hand on his shoulder. “Kenny...”

Kenny shrugged her off. Everybody leaned back to give him space to explode. He finished the rest of his bourbon and staggered to his feet. “I gotta—I’m going outside.”

Stan lifted half out of his seat ready to follow, but Randy and Kyle grabbed either of his arms and pulled him back down. “Sure, dude,” Kyle said.

Kenny yanked the slider, swung it shut behind him. He looked over his shoulder to find them all staring until Sharon pulled the blinds.

He stepped off the concrete slab into the yard, the half-frozen ground breaking underfoot. He made it to the old tree and looked up at its clapboard clubhouse, which at this point had the structural integrity of wet cardboard. But it was still here after all these years. That counted for something, surely.

Kenny embarked up the ladder. He dug his boots into the crotch of a low hanging branch and shouldered the trapdoor open. Dust and leaves rained down. He crawled through the aperture and crossed his legs, testing the weight threshold with his hands. Assured he wouldn’t fall to his death, he pawed his coveralls until locating his smokes and lit one up. He’d be going through a pack an hour for the next fifteen years, he suspected.

Wind crept through the gaps in the wood, circled Kenny’s hands and sluiced up his sleeves. He huddled around his cigarette for warmth and stared at the floor, at his paint-covered knees, trying to muster the will to break down, or cry—or anything.

“Cartman’s dead,” he said to himself. Digging the knife just to see how much blood would spill. “Cartman’s dead,” he said again. “Cartman’s dead, Cartman’s dead, Cartman’s _dead—_ ”

Nothing. His eyes remained dry as sawdust. Cement poured into his body, turned it into a mold. It wasn’t that the reality of it all hadn’t hit—out of anybody, it’d make sense he’d come to terms with it first. His early exposure to mortality desensitized him. Death was death, he was death, and Cartman was dead—a normal Tuesday afternoon.

He crawled to the cutout window and looked across Stan’s yard. The naked branches expanded his field of vision, and from this vantage point he watched cops and detectives go in and out of Cartman’s house. They toted black bags and wore latex gloves, shoulders set at ease with unsurprised disinterest. This was just another normal Tuesday afternoon for them, too.

Kenny smoked another two cigarettes, his pack now rattling half-empty when he tucked it back into his coveralls. He stayed leaning out the window, watching and waiting for a sign—from God, or the cops, or Cartman himself. Traffic through Cartman’s backyard lessened, but as far as Kenny was aware nobody had carried out any bodies yet. Thank Christ for the South Park police department’s incompetence.

The sliding door stirred him from his stupor. He turned to find Stan and Kyle walking across the yard. They climb up the tree together and sat behind him.

“Things are slowing down,” he said. “We’ll go in soon. Before they take him away.”

“How are we getting in?” Kyle asked.

Kenny pondered. Asked himself what would Cartman do. He needed to put that on a bracelet, turn it into a binding contract. “We’ll create a diversion.”

“How?” Stan asked.

“I don’t know. It’ll have to be close by.” Kenny retracted from the window, landed in a sprawl. “Something big enough they’ll all go running.”

Kyle snorted. “We’d have to detonate a _bomb_.”

“Hm,” Kenny said.

“Uh, I was joking—”

“It’d work,” Stan said. “I mean, what else can we do besides kill somebody _else_?”

Kenny stirred. His cigarette fell from his fingers. Kyle and Stan jolted, concerned. He imagined them marching him out to the street where they’d shoot him in full view and put him out of his discontent, at least for a week.

“I’m kidding,” Stan established.

“Yeah,” Kenny muttered. He picked up his cigarette and studied the amputated cherry which had landed on his knee. He pinched it before it singed a hole, relished in his melting fingertips. It was time to unveil his dormant pyromania. “Let’s do the bomb thing.”

The slider opened once more. All three of them crowded the window. Randy stood under the tree, hands on his hips. “How’re you boys doing?”

Kenny looked at Stan, who sighed. “Can you blow something up for us?” he asked his father.

Randy nodded without hesitation. “What’ll it be?”

“Um, one sec—” Stan fell back into the clubhouse. “Well?”

Kyle tapped the floor beneath them. “This wood is dry as hell—it’ll catch fast.”

Stan blanched. “But...it’s our _clubhouse_ , bro.”

“Sacrifices must be made,” Kenny told him. “I mean, what’s the point? It just sits here.”

“I guess,” Stan said, unconvinced.

“What did you want to do with it, anyway? Watch it rot away?”

“Kind of.”

“I don’t know,” Kyle said. “It’s already falling apart.”

“We aren’t kids anymore,” Kenny added.

“Fine,” Stan relented. “Whatever.”

Conversation dropped off into quiet memoriam. Each took inventory of different recollections. The last vestiges of their childhood had died today. If they couldn’t send Cartman off across Stark’s Pond in a Viking funerary canoe lit up with Molotov cocktails, this would have to suffice.

The wood creaked and moaned in sympathy. Stan circuited the clubhouse, passing his fingertips across messages and doodles penned in multicolored Sharpies. Playground graffiti a thousand times more vulgar within the sanctity of their fortress. Handwriting—and, in Kenny’s case, artistic talent—improved linearly from wall to wall. Portions of it were pasted over with band posters and porno mag cutouts.

“Dude—come here,” Stan beckoned.

Kyle and Kenny obeyed. Stan lifted a Playboy spread sun-bleached with age. Underneath laid Cartman’s characteristic scrawl of capital letters constructed in sharp angles. He always wrote stuff down like he was carving a school desk with a knife. Mostly angry declarations against the world at large. There was a time when the world at large did not extend outside of this clubhouse; when Kyle, Stan, and Kenny were his only victims in that declining order.

He hadn’t left behind any epic manifesto. “Screw you guys,” Kenny read.

“That’s fucking—stupid,” Kyle said.

Stan smirked. “I know, right? What an asshole.”

“It ain’t no will and testament,” Kenny agreed.

“Yeah, but,” Stan lowered the Playboy spread, “it’s him.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything more,” Kyle said.

Kenny sure had, but he kept that to himself. Regardless, it was enough of a goodbye for them to exit down the tree, where Randy still waited.

“We need you to set the clubhouse on fire,” Stan announced.

Randy rubbed his hands together. “Just tell me when.”

They returned inside for deliberation. Kyle griped that they couldn’t contaminate Cartman’s place, so Kenny went out to his truck for protective gear. He came back with jumpsuits and a box of latex gloves he used when mixing pigments into paint.

The sky had darkened to a violet crisp by the time they suited up. Sharon watched with trepidation, but let them march out to the backyard without protest. Randy met them at the tree with fire starters and gasoline, which he passed to Stan. “I’ll let you boys do the honor.”

Stan gave the instruments of destruction to Kenny. “Here, man.”

Kenny’s brow furrowed. “But—it’s yours. You built it.”

“My mom’s ex-boyfriend built it,” Stan corrected. “Anyway—I can’t do it. And I think you kind of have to.”

Kyle nodded his assent. “This is your deal.”

Kenny huffed a sigh through his nose. He stuffed the fire starters in his pockets and hooked the gas can’s nozzle into the loop on his hip. “Okay. Alright.”

He went up the ladder and started pouring gasoline everywhere before giving it too much thought. The Playboy girl stared at him disdainfully, her pert nipples and spread labia forming a mocking snarl. He tore her off the wall—then was forced to confront Cartman’s dying words.

“Fucking—Christ,” Kenny spat. He unzipped his jumpsuit and dug into his coveralls for a knife, wielded the blade and stabbed it into the crevice between two-by-fours. He hacked at it till his hand cramped. Sweat sprung at the base of his neck, then collected at his clavicle.

The wood chipped off into thousands of needles. Kenny kept at it, gouging a box around Cartman’s asinine catchphrase. But you can’t cut the Berlin wall with a fucking pocket knife. Kenny let it clatter to the floor, heaving. His sweaty hand formed a fist and punched the wall. It felt good, so he did it again, until the ink was smeared with his blood.

Kyle’s voice drifted upward. “Kenny? You good?”

Kenny forced himself back onto his knees. He finished dousing the clubhouse, left a trail of fire starters in his wake, let the last of the gasoline spill over the ladder on his way down. He dropped into the grass, tossed the empty canister to the side, and examined his knuckles crowned in thorns. “Yeah,” he panted. “I’m good.”

“Holy shit!” Kyle grabbed his wrist. “What the hell happened to your _hand_?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Dude,” Stan said.

Kenny wrenched out of Kyle’s grasp. “Forget _about_ it!”

He pulled a pair of latex gloves out of his pocket and put them on, flexed his hands. Fresh blood turned the blue plastic into brown.

Randy raised a box of kitchen matches. “Now?”

“Now,” Kenny said.

“Step back, boys.”

“C’mon,” Kenny ordered, jerking his head towards the fence separating Stan’s yard from Cartman’s.

They stood at the fence. Randy struck a match and held it to the ladder’s first rung. “Au revior,” he bid adieu.

Nothing happened, at first. Kyle coughed into his shoulder. Stan turned his back to the clubhouse and looked through a rotted whorl in the fence. Kenny lit a cigarette, because it seemed thematically appropriate. Sharon was probably watching from the kitchen sink wondering what she’d done to deserve this.

Randy climbed halfway up the ladder, lit another match, stretched to reach one of the fire starters. Dominoes started to fall. Kenny hoped the Playboy girl acted as tinder to the flame.

“We should’ve put logs up there,” Kyle said. “Paper. Firecrackers.”

Kenny tapped his cigarette. “Just wait.”

“I can’t look,” Stan said, his forehead pressed into the fence.

Kenny touched his elbow. “It’ll be okay, bud.”

“We’re cooking now,” Randy observed, joining them.

The clubhouse crackled. An invisible cloud spilled inside out, rattling leafless branches.

Kenny knew all about gestation. “See?” he said. “It’s happening.”

“The end,” Kyle grunted.

Stan looked over his shoulder. “God _damn_ it.”

The backyard turned into a microwave.

“Kenny,” Kyle and Stan called. He’d started walking towards the steadily incinerating tree.

Randy shoulders tensed. “Hold on, son—”

The clubhouse sighed dragon breath. Light flared. Kenny climbed up the ladder and stuck his head through the trapdoor.

Rancid, wavering heat licked his face, turned his hair to frizz, burned his nostrils. Bite-sized flames spread from fire starter to fire starter, ice skated across puddles of gasoline. The Playboy girl lay in the middle of the floor, singed at the edges. An orange hole pierced her vagina and ate her out like a parasitic worm devouring a rotten apple. Kenny flicked his cigarette. It traveled in a glowing arc but landed short of its destination.

He let go of the trapdoor, fell into a tornado of smoke and tree bark and grass and sky. The ground caught him—violently, without sympathy. You fucking idiot. This is what you get.

His guts jumped into his throat and punched an empty breath out of his mouth. Hands on his shoulders dragged him away. “I fell,” he lied.

Except the words didn’t come, because he didn’t have the air to vocalize them. Stan and Kyle helped him sit up. He clutched his stomach and hacked a painful loogie. Snot dripped from his nose and joined the saliva, creating a rope swing off his bottom lip.

He truncated it with the back of his bleeding hand. “I’m okay.”

“You’re lucky you didn’t break your spine, you maniac,” Kyle said.

“You don’t really—look okay, either,” Stan contributed.

Kenny ignored them both. He stood up one bone at time and took a running start towards the fence. The sky blurred past on a film reel then cut to black as he belly flopped into Cartman’s backyard.

All the houses on the block were replicas of each other. So when Kenny lifted his head he looked through the sliding door into Cartman’s kitchen same as if he’d smashed face-first into the Marshes’ backyard. The only difference was the color: sunny yellow framed by a lime green exterior, which Kenny never understood. _His_ house might’ve been a pile of shit sculpted into the shape of a box, but at least it wasn’t a neon eyesore.

Cops milled about violating the place with their black boots. Somebody came in and frantically gesticulated at the smoking tree. Kenny curled into the shadows for a minute, praying they wouldn’t see him.

“Coat is clear,” Stan announced.

Kenny looked up. What the hell they were standing on he had no idea, but Stan and Kyle were peeking over the fence—not at him, but into Cartman’s recently vacated kitchen. Kenny followed their gaze and saw a trail of blood snake its way across the tiles.

“Holy shit,” Kyle said. Stan didn’t say anything at all.

Kenny pushed himself up to his feet, braced his hands on his knees. “You guys don’t have to come with me—” He spat out a mouthful of grass, still not totally recovered from either fall. His bones felt all out of place and his organs needed reorganizing. “You’d better stay and help Randy, actually.”

“Right,” Kyle said. “That’s—a good idea.”

Stan went full puppy dog, big brown eyes glistening with nervous fear. “Are you _sure_ you want to do this?”

“I need to,” Kenny said.

“What if it fucks you up, though? What if his guts are all over the place? You’ll be tripping over his _intestines—_ ”

“Don’t _say_ that,” Kyle snapped. “Cartman shot himself in the _head—_ he wasn’t mauled by a fucking bear!”

“Whatever’s in there, I can handle it,” Kenny promised.

Stan’s anxiety was apparently contagious, because now Kyle got all spooked. “You don’t know that, Kenny!”

The flames behind them grew big enough for Kenny to lose sight of their faces. Smoke filled the air. Sharon started shouting at Randy to call 911, like the entirety of South Park’s emergency response team wasn’t next door.

Kenny didn’t have time for this shit. He’d never bought into Cartman’s supposed genius before, but the guy had to be a mastermind to work all these disparate puppet strings. All Kenny knew how to do was cut everything loose and never look back.

“I’m going,” he said. “Get down before somebody sees you.”

Stan and Kyle reluctantly skedaddled into a plume of smoke. Kenny sprinted towards Cartman’s sliding door. He slammed into the wall beside it, arms curled flat against his chest. He remembered Kyle freaking out about leaving a trace and bent down to rip off his muddy boots, tied the laces together, then tossed them around his neck like a pair of skates and opened the door.

He scoped the room, ready to leap back outside at a moment’s notice. But it seemed all the cops had scrammed, so he eased inside and shut the door behind him; the chaos outside muffled not by the house’s walls, but the pounding in his ears.

An open box of cereal sat on the counter next to a bowl of curdled milk. The refrigerator hummed. Magnetized pictures of Cartman at various ages eyed Kenny’s cautious, sock-footed steps. The whole kitchen sat deathly quiet. A super-sized diorama. This is where Eric Cartman lived, and this is how he died. You’d have thought nothing traumatic happened until you encountered the blood on the floor. It started in drops, then thickened across the tile-carpet boundary.

Kenny stopped short in the living room doorway. He didn’t have time to process all of it at the moment, but in the following years he’d obsessively piece together what happened, to the best of his ability, that Tuesday afternoon.

Cartman was a verifiable insomniac known to stay awake seventy-eight hours straight before his body succumbed to coma-like sleep. The point is that when Kenny started on his way back from painting a farmhouse out in the boonies, Cartman had just woken up. Liane, most likely clued in by the groaning ceiling as he plodded to consciousness upstairs, poured him a bowl of cereal.

They never found out where Cartman got the pistol or long he’d had it. He wouldn’t have just held it in his hand. Knowing him, he’d stick it in the back of his pants. Playing gangster. Say hello to my little friend. The geek probably practiced in his mirror _Taxi Driver_ style.

Liane called him downstairs. Come get breakfast, Poopsiekins. She was probably half-conscious herself, doped on cocaine and last night’s cum load. Kenny never knew if Cartman spun that point of contention out of his head or if it was rooted in reality. Cartman’s definition of reality had always been a little screwy. To be fair, so had Kenny’s.

Already Liane should’ve known something was off when Cartman walked in out of costume. He only wore denim if he was meeting a woman or the president, preferring sweatpants instead like the greasy slime ball he was. He put on a jeans, though; a nice pair of Levi’s in the largest size Kohl’s offered, with the sweater he wore once a year on Christmas. If he owned a three piece suit he might’ve worn that instead. Maybe it was to get into character. Maybe he just wanted to look nice when he died. It didn’t _matter_ , but people have a tendency to ruminate on the smallest details and all their offshoots if they think about something long enough, and Kenny thought about Cartman every day for the rest of his never-ending life.

Something attracted Liane away from the kitchen counter. Cartman whipped out his pistol the second she came into view. He fired a shot—bang! Not to the gut or the heart or the brain. Kenny liked to think Cartman missed because his hands were shaking with nerves, but he knew Cartman had it all planned out with sick detail.

The bullet grazed Liane’s shoulder. Her blood fanned out onto the kitchen tile. She staggered, maybe held onto the wall just like Kenny was doing now, and stumbled towards Cartman with a mother’s besieging gaze. Cartman pulled the trigger a second time. Right into her left leg. She buckled to the floor. Blood pooled out of her thigh and flooded the carpet. Cartman strode forward and aimed the finishing blow between her eyes, then offed himself.

They landed perpendicular to each other in cruciform. Kenny skirted around Liane’s corpse and stood above Cartman’s, waiting to feel something besides detached curiosity. This entire time he hoped the sight would finally smash his ribcage open, but the fire within stayed locked up. Now he knew it’d be there forever. In hindsight, part of what inspired his obsession was the apathy towards the gruesome act.

“Jesus Christ, Eric,” he said. “You really blew it this time.”

He chuckled at his own joke.

A metallic glint caught his eye. The gun had fallen a couple feet away, demarcated by the kind of plastic numbered sign Kenny thought only existed in crime shows and drive-in diners. He tiptoed around Cartman, bent down, and picked it up. He had no idea how to check the chamber, but he’d seen enough movies to click the safety.

“I’m jacking your shit,” he told Cartman. He unzipped his jumpsuit and stuffed the muzzle into the breastpocket of his coveralls, looking cooler than Cartman ever did in his stupid holiday sweater. “See if the cops figure it out. You’re watching me, huh? I know you are. Throw ‘em off my trail for me, okay? Can you do that?”

Sure, Cartman might have said. Whatever you need, buddy.

Kenny flashed him a thumbs up. “Awesome, bro. Thanks a lot.” He gave the two bodies one last look, then pivoted on his heel towards the stairs, continuing to talk to Cartman on the way to his bedroom. “I hope you don’t have anything faggy you’ve been hiding. Some crazy porn or something.” Realistically he knew he didn’t have the time to find Cartman’s stash of gay nudes with Justin Timberlake’s face pasted on top, but it felt nice to needle him, especially when he couldn’t reply.

Kenny shouldered Cartman’s bedroom door open, not surprised to find it was the same disgusting shade of grape juice purple. He kicked piles of dirty clothes around, looking for skeletons metaphorical and otherwise, then turned his attention above floor level when none appeared.

Crumpled soda cans covered almost every flat surface, including a massive desk which housed a top of the line computer. Nobody had asked because nobody wanted to know the answer, but everybody assumed Cartman got up to insane illegal stuff online. That’s how he got his money—had to be, because never left the house. He’d become something of a hermit, in his later days.

Kenny bypassed the set up in favor of the dresser. He pulled drawers out and started emptying loose change and childhood accouterments buried underneath threadbare boxer briefs.

“Got a diary?” he asked, pocketing an old Terrance and Phillip keychain. “C’mon, man. I know you left me a little something, at least. Give me a clue. I’ve got a raging clue.”

The window rattled obnoxiously. Kenny raced over and peered outside. The street below was flooded with people watching the inferno unfold in Stan’s backyard, their faces illuminated red-blue-yellow. A firetruck had joined the squad cars sometime within the last ten minutes. Cops worked around the firemen, wrapping Cartman’s front yard in yellow ribbons, ready to go back in and Shop-vac his brains off the carpet now that the fire was moderately contained.

“Shit,” Kenny cursed. “Fucking _fuck_ me.” He looked at the ceiling. “Help me out, douchebag!”

A soda can rattled and fell off the computer keyboard. Kenny walked towards it, then looked up. He swept his arm across the desk. An envelope sat underneath the mountain of trash.

“You’ve gottta be kidding me,” he mumbled.

The sound of the front door opening echoed up the stairs. Kenny crammed the envelope into his coveralls, then zipped his jumpsuit so that neither it nor the gun fell out.

“What now?” he asked. “I’m outta _time_ , Eric, let’s go!”

He got slapped upside the head with a long-buried memory from high school of him and Cartman smoking pot in the hallway bathroom. Neither of them had wanted to give up prime seating so they squished together on the toilet, Kenny practically in Cartman’s lap, and shot-gunned each other’s parted mouths, blowing excess smoke out of the open window—which faced the backyard.

Kenny jogged down the hall quietly as possible. He climbed onto the toilet and yanked the window open, threw his boots out, then pulled himself over the sill, asking, “You’re gonna catch me, right?”

There wasn’t time to wait for an answer. He plummeted two stories down, and everything went black.

/

Kenny woke up in Hell.

Not the plane of existence, but the hospital. It was a gradual awakening made apparent by the _beep beep beep_ of a heart monitor turned alarm clock.

He opened his eyes to an empty room and an orange plaster cast on his right arm. A nurse came in and checked his vitals upon realizing he was awake. She didn’t act like he was a criminal who’d been found at the scene of a crime, so he assumed Cartman crawled up from the underworld and carried him to safety after he passed out.

The reality of it was not so fantastic.

“We had no idea what was going on,” Stan relayed; he picked Kenny up from the hospital later that Wednesday. “There was firefighters all over my house and smoke everywhere. Then all of the sudden Kyle—”

Kyle stuck his head up front, somewhat pissed at having been relegated to the backseat of Stan’s car. “I watched you fucking launch yourself from the second floor!”

Kenny rolled his eyes. He had a major headache and Stan wouldn’t let him smoke. Every bump in the road sent his temple rattling against the cold window. “The hell was I supposed to do?” he asked. “Wait and get arrested?”

“No, it’s just—”

“The whole entire situation,” Stan said.

“We had to jump the fence and boost you back into Stan’s yard _without_ anybody seeing,” Kyle reported. “Plus you had a broken _arm_.”

They must not have treated Kenny very graciously, because he’d be stuck with this cast for another month and a half. “Can we stop at a gas station, or something?” he asked. “I’m dying for a cigarette.”

Stan sighed and turned off at the next light. “I need to fill up the tank, anyway.” He parked at a gas pump and handed Kenny a ten dollar bill. “Don’t worry about paying me back,” he smirked. “Considering your _hospital_ bills.”

Kenny snatched the cash with his gimp hand and used his uninjured arm to open the door. “Shut the fuck up, man.”

Kyle slunk out of the back. “I’ll come with you.”

“Fine,” Kenny grumbled.

Stan had stopped at his house before Hell’s Pass to grab a change of clothes. He must’ve felt nostalgic about everything, because he’d chosen Kenny’s grimy parka for the occasion. It wasn’t his _original_ parka, but a replacement all his friends pitched together to get him for Christmas in their senior year. Partly a joke and partly a token of sentimental affection, the gift touched Kenny more than he let on.

He’d stopped wearing it around the same time Cartman drifted out of his life. It felt like a sort of poetic justice to pull the hood up over his head, his long hair spilling out the hem being the only difference nowadays. He hadn’t had a haircut since graduation, which always drove Cartman nuts, and planned to go full ratty Rapunzel.

The scent of a thousand car fresheners greeted him and Kyle once they entered the gas station. Kenny switched back and forth on his heels beside the soda fountain as Kyle poured himself a 32-ounce Coke.

“Want a coffee, or something?” Kyle asked.

Kenny waved his portrait of Alexander Hamilton. “Stan only gave me a ten.”

“Fuck that. I’ll spot you. The caffeine’ll help your headache.”

“I got pain meds, you know.”

Kyle set his soda aside and jammed a cup underneath the coffee dispenser. “Yeah, and your parents are probably gonna steal ‘em.” He popped the lid on, then shoved the drink into Kenny’s hand. “Just take it.”

“Gimme some sugar,” Kenny said.

They went and stood in line. Kenny swirled his coffee around so the five packets-worth of sweetener wouldn’t settle at the bottom.

Kyle elbowed his side. “Check it out. It’s the old movie theater dude.”

Kenny glanced at the cashier. “I’ll be damned.” The guy worked a thousand menial jobs, always popping up at weird times. Kenny was beginning to suspect he was an agent of God, or Satan—keeping tabs on him.

“Hey,” Kyle said once it was their turn at the register.

The old movie theater dude/cashier’s face flashed with aged recognition. “Oh—uh, hey. I heard about Cartman.”

“It is what it is,” Kyle said, pulling out his wallet. “I’m covering Kenny’s coffee.”

The cashier swiped his debit card, continuing with the conversation; the whole town would be talking about it for months on end. “And Marsh’s house burning down in the same day? That’s crazy.”

“His house didn’t burn down,” Kyle corrected, “just the tree.”

The nosy son of a bitch returned his card. “How?”

Kenny shouldered past Kyle. “Spontaneous combustion. Lemme have a pack of Marlboro Reds.” He surveyed a plastic stand full of lighters and plucked one decorated with a big-breasted lady buttressed by a flaming skull. “And this.”

Stan passed them on their way outside. “I’ll be out in a sec,” he said. “Gotta piss.”

“That dude’s got the bladder of a newborn infant,” Kyle groused.

Kenny rounded the corner of the building, set his coffee on top of a cabinet of bagged ice, and smacked the fresh pack of cigs against his thigh. He fumbled with the plastic wrapper for about five minutes before Kyle tired of watching him suffer.

“I’ll get it,” he said, stuffing his soda into the crook of his arm. He went as far as removing the cigarette itself, which he held in front of Kenny’s face.

Kenny craned his neck forward and bit the filter between his teeth. “Thanks.”

Kyle sucked on his cola. “No problem.”

Kenny settled against the bricks at his back and watched the cloud of smoke curl into a sunlight beam. Kyle of course ruined the tranquil moment by gnawing on his straw. Kenny sent him an irritated look. “Can I help you?”

“Uh—” The end of the straw scraped off Kyle’s teeth. “I was just wondering. I mean— _how_ was it?”

“How was what?”

“You know what I mean.”

Kenny shrugged another drag. The nicotine loosened the synapses in his brain, lubricated his mind for conversation. “Honestly, it wasn’t too bad.”

“But—like, was it gross?”

“Yeah, man. It’s a dead fucking body.”

Kyle’s nose scrunched. “How are you so blasé about it?”

“I dunno.” Kenny didn’t have the will to go into his relationship with death. Or Eric Cartman, for that matter. “Like you said, it’s just what it is.”

“You aren’t sad about it?”

Kenny licked his chapped lips, unsure how to answer. “Well—”

Thankfully, San blustered forth, wearing a brand new red beanie. “Hey!”

“What the hell is on your head?” Kyle asked.

Stan grinned. “It was only five bucks!”

“It’s disgusting,” Kenny said. “It looks like you turned the devil’s scrotum into a hat.”

“What?” Stan pulled the thing off and flipped it around in his hands, his black hair standing up in cold static. “It’s not that bad.”

“You ain’t due for an outfit change,” Kenny told him. “Stick to the basics.”

Stan, impressionable and insecure, balled the beanie into his jacket pocket with a pout. “You guys suck.”

Kenny laughed. “If I say I’m sorry can I smoke in your car?”

Stan obliged him. Kyle was just happy to get shotgun. He plugged his phone into the aux cord and played old songs from middle school. Kenny wiggled his fingers, squeezed by the anaconda cast, to the beat. His left hand he propped on the open window, bruised knuckles wrapped in gauze compliments of the hospital. He would’ve refused the additional hundred buck charge, if he’d been conscious. Paper towels and duct tape worked just as well. He didn’t let himself get worked up over it, though, trying to enjoy the moment. He kept catching glances of himself in Stan’s rearview mirror—he looked like a schizophrenic sunflower, windblown hair ejaculating out of his orange hood.

“We dropped your truck off at your place,” Stan said once they passed over the train tracks.

Kenny relinquished his finished cigarette to the breeze. He took a gulp of lukewarm coffee and rolled it around his mouth before swallowing. “What about my other stuff?”

“Everything’s there,” Kyle said. “Your painting things, your coveralls—”

“Uh, thanks—”

Kyle twisted in his seat. “Cartman’s _gun_.”

Kenny shriveled up. “Look, I can explain—”

Stan cleared his throat. “We found the letter, too. We didn’t open it or anything, but. Looks like you were right.”

“I knew he wouldn’t ditch without the last word,” Kenny said.

Kyle didn’t turn back around until his glare burned a hole into Kenny’s skull, after which he remained resolutely silent.

“Maybe you’ll figure out why he did what he did,” Stan offered.

“Maybe,” Kenny said. He wasn’t sure he even wanted to read it, at this point.

Stan pulled up to his house. The weeds stirred as if alerted to Kenny’s presence. Nobody moved.

“I guess this is it,” Stan said.

“I guess so,” Kyle said.

They waited for Kenny to speak. He had no idea what they wanted him to say.

“This is so fucking weird,” Stan said, to break the quiet.

“Yeah?” Kenny prompted.

The steering wheel creaked. “I know we didn’t see him much anymore.”

“He chose not to stick around,” Kyle reminded.

“Still,” Stan said. “He’s always been _there_. Some people you think are just going to always be there, like—like they live forever.”

“I know what you mean,” Kenny murmured.

His friends looked over their shoulders simultaneously.

Kenny frowned. “What?”

They shared a glance. “Well,” Kyle began.

“What was with you two?” Stan asked. “Did you, like— _love_ him?”

“You’re joking,” Kenny said.

“No,” Kyle said. “We’re not.”

“Ugh.” Kenny’s spine curled over his lap. He braced his forehead on the heel of his hand. “It’s complicated.”

“It’s just—” Stan took a deep breath, let it out.

Kyle patted Kenny’s knee. “We want to make sure you’ll be okay.”

“I’ll be fine,” Kenny said. “I’m serious.” He sat up to look them in the face; they deserved that much, at least. “Going in the house, seeing everything—it helped. It made it real. That’s all I needed.”

Stan and Kyle didn’t look like they believed him, but he couldn’t stand another second of their misplaced concern. He put his cigarettes and lighter in the brown paper bag from the pharmacy and crawled out of the car.

Stan rolled his window down. “We’re here for you, man.”

“Any time,” Kyle added.

“Thanks, guys,” Kenny said. He meant it, too.

He stood at the curb till Stan’s car disappeared, then walked towards his truck. It sat in the drive, alone, innocent and oblivious. Nobody else was home. Kenny hadn’t expected his parents or brother to care about the past day and a half at all. The news would travel to Karen eventually, all the way in Boulder. She’d come down and ream his ass for not telling him about it immediately, then give him a skinny-armed hug and curl his hair behind his ears like he’d done to her when they were kids.

Stan had given him his keys at the hospital. He unlocked the truck and found his coveralls neatly folded—Kyle’s consideration—around a suspicious bulge. Cartman’s gun thumped to the floor when Kenny unfurled the garment, the envelope fluttering after.

Kenny sat in the driver’s seat, one leg hanging out the open door. He put his coffee in the cup holder, then stuck a lit cigarette between his teeth. He placed the gun next to his hip and held the crumpled envelope in his bandaged hand.

_To Kenny_ , it read.

Kenny pushed his hood down and scratched his thumbnail along the underside of his jaw. Gravel shifted, surreptitiously, beneath the front axle of his truck. His lips quirked—“Fine, fine. I’ll hurry up, you impatient bastard.”

He retrieved his pocket knife from his puddled coveralls and cut a clean line through the top of the envelope. Several pieces of paper fell out. Kenny picked up the first one.

A ridiculous amount of money screamed at him from the top of the page. Beneath it were typed step-by-step instructions on how to collect it all from a bunch of offshore accounts in various paper and crypto currencies. Kenny had never seen so many zeros before. It was enough dough to cover his hospital bills, for sure. It’d put Karen through college, and pay for all of Kevin’s inevitable future bail bonds, with plenty left over.

An unhinged smile spread. “Not a poor piece of shit anymore, huh?” he asked, to no reply.

He tucked the document behind a collection of notebook pages stapled together. Cartman didn’t even have the wherewithal to tear them out properly, the fuzzy edges crinkling into Kenny’s lap. He wrote with such force the capital letters bubbled like raised scars on skin.

Kenny ashed his cigarette, and started reading.

_Kenny—_

_By the time you read this I’ll be dead. And I know you’re reading this, because I know you won’t be able to help yourself. You always were like that. Trying to get to know me. Well, tough luck. That’s part of why I stopped associating with you. You can never let me be. Some things you just don’t need to know._

_I’m not going to tell you why I killed my whore of a mother. Out of anybody you’d probably get it, but the thing is nobody ever will, so I won’t even bother attempting to explain myself. I have to do it, though. And I’m not gonna get thrown in jail or go on the lam. Really there’s only one option._

_I’m not even sure why I’m writing this, to be honest with you. Do you like hearing that? I’m being honest, for the first time in my life. Please take a moment to bask in the privilege of my full disclosure. You’re the only one who I’d even think to communicate with, which I guess is why I’m doing this in the first place._

_I’m not scared to die. I hear Hell’s an okay place. You can bet your sweet, skinny ass I’ll be king down there. I guess my one regret is I never got a piece of that. Your ass, I mean. Maybe in another dimension I did, and we’re kicking it in Cancun or something. I would’ve treated you nice. I mean it._

_Enclosed you will find everything I’ve got to my name. Well, not really my name, technically. But it’s mine. I told you I’m an economic genius, didn’t I? Nobody ever believed me when I said I’d strike gold. You can’t tell nobody, though. Don’t be an idiot about it. I know, considering your upbringing, you’ve got the fiscal responsibility of a chimpanzee. I wrote it all out for you. An elementary student could understand my directions. Let’s hope you’re smarter than a five year old. Sometimes I’m not too sure if you are. Don’t blow it all on hookers and drugs, okay? Or at least put Karen through school before you do._

_I didn’t prepare a thesis or anything. This isn’t a suicide note. I’m not committing suicide, first of all. Or murder. Whatever story the cops make up, don’t believe any of it. I’m just fulfilling my destiny. Like I said, you won’t get it. Don’t work yourself up trying to decode my final moments, even though I know you’re going to. It is what it is. For your own mental wellbeing, leave it at that._

_I’m sure you’re expecting some sort of goodbye. We both know that’s unnecessary. I’ve got some words for Stan and Kyle, though. You really gotta stop letting them micromanage your life. Just tell ‘em to screw off. Tell ‘em I said to leave you the hell alone, or I’ll haunt their asses. They’re not enlightened like you and I. They can’t conceive a world where we leave everybody to our own infernal devices. That’s what I liked about you. Until you turned it personal, that is._

_But it’s not your fault what happened. It’s nobody’s fault. Least of all mine. It’s my mother’s fault. Or the universe, if you want to be literal. It’s all such a fucked up place. I’m one of the few who’s got the courage to rise to the challenge. You are, too, if you can realize it._

_If you think I’m writing this by candlelight bawling my eyes out I’m sorry to say you’ll be disappointed. I’m not gonna tell you I love you or anything. That’s such bullshit. As previously established, I’m trying to be honest, here._

_However, it’s safe to say you’re the only human being alive I can tolerate longer than two seconds. I miss you. I can admit that, now that I’m about to die. It really sucks what happened between us. But that’s the universe for you. The people who least deserve it always get the shit end of the stick. That’s part of why I’m doing this. It’s not just for me. It’s for you, too. Maybe my sacrifice will even the cosmic scales a little and turn your luck around. If that’s what love is, then. You know._

_I could sit here for hours and write out all the things I’ve meant to tell you, but then you’d have a novel on your hands and I know you’re barely literate as is. So I’ll just cut it short here. Maybe you can visit me sometime, and we can catch up like we were supposed to. I always wanted to, you have to believe me._

_Anyway, I’m off to go kill myself. Don’t let it effect you too much. Out of anybody in this whole stupid world, you deserve a good life. And you’ll get it. I’ll be watching._

Kenny reread the letter over and over again until his forgotten cigarette broke off and burned his thigh. Something wet fell, too—tears.

He started crying earnestly after that, kind of like how you don’t feel pain until you see the blood. Big, ugly sobs that wracked his whole body. He curled up in a ball and stayed there for he didn’t know how long. It could’ve been thirty minutes, an hour, or the whole afternoon.

Eventually he unfolded his skeleton. His crying didn’t cease, but simmered down to silent tears. He gathered all his things and went inside, let the screen door carelessly slap shut behind him; it bounced on its hinges, sounding like laughter.

He went into his room, folded Cartman’s last will and testament back into its envelope, stuck it under the floorboard he used to hide money and weed from his parents, then swallowed three pain pills, laid down on his bed, and slept for fifteen hours.

Somebody organized a funeral. Kenny didn’t attend. Stan and Kyle told him Cartman’s family from Nebraska showed up and that Butters threw himself over Cartman’s closed casket. Butters never got back the mind he lost that day. Kenny didn’t have a mind to lose.

The police closed the case. No one ever asked what happened to Cartman’s gun. No one asked what happened to Cartman himself, for that matter. Everyone had their own ideas, of course; even Stan and Kyle batted theories around, but Kenny never indulged in speculation out loud.

South Park’s real estate market couldn’t afford an empty lot. The whole murder-suicide shtick might’ve drummed somebody’s curiosity, but Kenny bought the house before it went to market. He’d been slowly collecting the money Cartman left behind through multiple bank accounts with the help of Cartman’s unnamed associates, who advised him to invest and buy property and all sorts of other shit. They must’ve gotten a cut of the check as incentive to handle his finances. By the time it all went through he got his cast sawed in half, spent a couple days nursing his soft, rotten skin, then went to work.

He sold off what furniture he could and donated the rest until there was nothing left but the empty rooms of bloody dollhouse. He started with the living room, first—tore out the stained carpet, laid drop cloths, put on his coveralls.

He painted the whole interior white. Downstairs, upstairs. Every bathroom and closet. Butters occasionally came by to help. He didn’t have any carpentry skills to speak of, but Kenny let him play around anyway. Whenever Stan and Kyle lent their assistance, though, things always went wrong. Circuits sparked, paint spilled, ladders fell. It was kind of a funny joke.

Kenny felt Cartman’s presence constantly and there was no predicting his temperament. Sometimes he’d deliver mercy in the form of a pretty sunrise or cool breeze. Other times he pushed Kenny down the stairs or open a window in the middle of the night. He slapped every cigarette out of Kenny’s hands for two weeks after Kenny decided to paint the exterior fuck-you orange. He was Kenny’s own guardian angel or demon, depending on the day—and always a poltergeist.

Kenny talked to him with increasing frequency. He liked to be acknowledged. A spoken good morning rewarded with a warm pass of sunlight through the blinds. He’d shove old memories into Kenny’s head and they’d spend hours reminiscing. Kenny slept in his old bedroom, right on his old mattress, in the impression made by a heavy body that wasn’t there. The door to Liane’s bedroom, meanwhile, locked after Kenny cleared it out and never opened again.

South Park picked itself back up and moved on, lugging the tragedy behind with all the rest. Autumn sharpened to winter. Gossip fell by the wayside. There was nothing more to say.

Kenny continued working as normal, to hide his newfound wealth per Cartman’s advice. He couldn’t _not_ work, his blood ran so blue. Most of the money sat untouched collecting interest. He wore the same shitty clothes, ate the same shitty food, drank the same shitty beer, and watched the same shitty shows. Except for Rob Schneider movies—Cartman screwed with the television so much Kenny gave up putting them on.

Christmas happened. The house was finished, by then. Kenny invited everybody for City Wok takeout—Stan and Kyle, Butters, even Karen, who took up an extra room now that she was back in town on break.

A new year dawned. Karen returned to Boulder. Cartman rattled the pictures of her Kenny put on the walls to show that he missed her. He ran Kevin out the house, though, whenever he visited between stints in jail.

Kenny couldn’t bring anybody home. He hooked up with a girl once, then tried it with a male, thinking Cartman might get his gay rocks off. Both attempts ended in disaster, each bookended by dreams of sweaty, faceless sex followed by relentless morning wood. So Kenny rescinded himself to marriage with a ghost.

He barely had any work in the winter; no longer a source of anxiety, this simply left him with ample opportunity to relax. He set up a studio space in the basement and started painting again for real. Mostly naked women contorted suggestively in bright hues—snowy Colorado landscapes, too. And dead bodies. Cartman’s rich friends kept in contact. When Kenny told them about his paintings they started peddling them to galleries across the country. Soon he was shipping pieces out of the basement once a month to the tune of thousands of dollars.

The more time went on the more impatient Cartman became, and it took all Kenny had to avoid sudden death. He wasn’t sure what he was waiting for, exactly. The timing never felt right. But Cartman really had ensured he got a good life. Kenny needed to repay him.

Spring cracked across the state and reopened old frost-wedged scars. Kenny went back to painting houses at first thaw. He loaded his truck and left town for the farmhouse he last saw in October, the day Cartman died. Apparently it’d taken a beating over the past few months.

The intuitive cows kept their distance. Animals could tell he was haunted, Kenny had figured out; they lacked the reasoning people used to explain away all the crazy stuff that happened around him. Most creatures stayed at the edge of Cartman’s radius. Except for cats. Kenny had around fifty strays in his backyard. Cartman attracted them like flies, the fucking pussy.

The old farmer took note of this when Kenny ducked under the porch to announce all the repairs were finished. Kenny shrugged it off, accustomed to bemused accusations. He accepted the farmer’s handshake, but turned down the cash; he didn’t need it anymore. A hundred barnyard felines dogged his heels on his way to his truck.

Kenny chose a winding route further into the mountains over going back to town. “I’m on my way,” he said to no one.

He pulled off onto the side of an empty road and opened his glove compartment. Cartman’s gun awaited him, locked and loaded with however many rounds were left in the chamber. Kenny pocketed the weapon and commenced a jaunt in the woods, so nervously excited that he tripped over his boots. A helpful gust of wind righted him to his feet, caressed his shoulders. He walked onward, a sufficient distance spanning the amount of time it took to smoke a cigarette, and came upon a clearing. A river bloated with snowmelt sounded not so far away, the air pregnant with new life. It was a good place to die.

Kenny poised Cartman’s gun at the roof of his mouth and pulled the trigger.

**Author's Note:**

> the happy ending tag was a red herring. i didn't think it was too bad, though.


End file.
